


Muliphein (The Strange and Breathless Remix)

by rosereddawn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Remix, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosereddawn/pseuds/rosereddawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>reposting old fic because it is no longer available at the kamikaze comm</p>
    </blockquote>





	Muliphein (The Strange and Breathless Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dark Heat ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/206097) by [write_light](https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light). 



> reposting old fic because it is no longer available at the kamikaze comm

_"These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after."_  
Natalie Babbitt

 

It’s the heat, Sam thinks. This thick heat that won’t let up, no matter how far into the long evening they’re driving. They’ve got the windows rolled down, panting for a little air. People lose their judgment in it. They pick fights they know they can’t win, and guns and knives come sliding out of the holsters so easily, as if they too are thirsty, dried out and mad from the sun. The earth is cracked and the brown grass withered.

Just after nightfall, Dean stirs them towards the bar and it’s got to be past midnight when he drags Sam away, his grip burning against Sam’s skin. A gun barrel points them out onto the road. Even in the dark, Sam can see the white terror in the man’s eyes, how he’s shaking where he grips the handle too tight, and by his feet, his friend sputters blood and curses into the dirt. The dull ache says Sam’s knuckles are going to hurt tomorrow. In his red haze he’s not feeling much yet.

-

First beer went down so fast, he didn’t even realize that he was on to this second, third, fourth. They had shots too, though he’d be hard pressed to count. Dean kept throwing the waitress - Mary-Ann? Mary-Lou? - his set of pick-up lines until not even the roll of her eyes could smother up her smile’s honesty. How exactly Dean managed the line between obnoxious and charming was the same mystery it’d always been to Sam, and if he was watching Dean’s play a little too closely, it was only with the morbid curiosity of all younger brothers, waiting for the glorious crash.

Not this time, though. There she was, pouring another drink on the house while Dean batted his eyelashes at her. The glass felt cool in Sam’s hand and he leaned against the counter, knee touching Dean’s, and let the pleasant buzz spread through his blood.

Two guys, local, their skin burned on the shoulders and their laughter too loud, caught Dean’s attention. “Let’s play,” he said and edged Sam off his seat. Before he knew it, there was a cue in his hand and a whole lot of green on the table before him, enough to get them going a couple of days. Credit cards just got cancelled. They could do with the money.

Easy play, tried and true. Shouldn’t have been a big deal, and Sam really isn’t sure how it went to shit. Something nudged the buzz in his blood up to a fever. Dean with his shit-eating grin, maybe, how he talked those guys out of their money same way he talked the waitress into pouring them drinks, how he bit and licked his lips and made a show out of lining up his shot, took time for a wink over his shoulder before he took it.

Should have left then. Should have left with the money, soon as they had it, drive off, down towards the waterfront maybe. A jump into the coldest river had never sounded more promising.

But by the time Sam put away his wallet, Dean was nowhere to be seen. He turned and turned. The waitress nodded towards the backdoor, that smile she had for Dean now gone. So what else could he do but wait, and down his beer, and notice which guys in the crowd went missing into the same direction as Dean. It’s possible that at some point he let the wrong kind of comment slip.

-

It’s the heat. A bar at the crossroads between three nests is the powder keg. It doesn’t take much of a spark to explode.

Next thing he knows, he’s crashing backwards out the doors, the guy coming after him. In the light of the neon signs, he stumbles back to his feet and smacks his fist into the guy’s face. Once, twice, until he twists his weight in Sam’s grip like a white flag, until the click of the safety snaps them out of it. He lets go. The guy crushes down into the dirt of the parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” Sam wants to say. He’s not sure what came over him, how it got to this, but his heart is beating too fast and his hands are shaking when he holds them up in an unspoken apology. Dean, wherever he just came from, grabs him and steers him towards the car.

The world comes rushing back in. The cicadas in the bushes, the thick black shadow where the trees grow by the wayside, the stretch of road that leads away. Dean says, “We better get going,” and they’re off, they’re away, heading into the night until it’s only black on black sliding past the windows, the bar and the fight lost way behind the tail lights.

The car sways and Dean laughs, all teeth. When he slaps Sam’s chest like he’s proud of him, little baby brother done something impressive after all, Sam can’t help it. His heart grows a size in spite of his shame. He's not sure what just happened, and he doesn't want to ask where Dean went, but now that his anger has drained, he could erach over and kiss Dean. If he could. If there was one sure way this wouldn’t send them spinning straight to hell.

So he only locks his jaw in self-denial and then slams his eyes shut. The car reeks of sweat and beer and smoke, dialed up by the heat trapped in its metal shell, and Dean is there like anchor and chain. For a moment, Sam can’t breathe. He fumbles for the crank and turns his head towards the open window. The first rush of air is superficial relief. It dries the sweat on his temples, but can’t chase the ghosts from his mind.

They sleep in the car that night. Both of them are too drunk to make it to wherever that next motel might be. Dean passes out in the front seat within minutes, snoring a little, and Sam lies in the back and stares up at the black sky until the pale sickle moon disappears in the trees. The night stretches for hours, dark and still. Not the faintest breeze lifts the heat, but he’s shivering anyway.

He wishes he could sleep. His thoughts like a maelstrom get caught up with Dean's laughter in the smoke of the bar, with the crack of bones under his knuckles. As if the last three years never happened and he’s still caught up spinning plans of running. In the evenings when Dean stayed out and Dad was chasing hunts god knows where, he should have been glad about a little privacy. Instead it ate away on him, that Dean would leave him, even for a few hours, that he would choose to lie with someone else.

Then came the night when he greeted Dean with a shotgun at the door, and that's when he understood. Knots this tangled need severing with a clean cut. How fast his heart was racing meant that Dean turned every hope of a new, plain life void. So he left, and tried not to think about how he abandoned Dean with all of Dad’s fury. Tried not to think of him at all.

Lying awake in these strange hours, when the whole world shrinks down to a shared darkness, he can almost believe that Dean too knows. That the rough tone to his voice that night in Stanford wasn’t imagined, but rather is proof of all this messed up need that is theirs. Would it take only the right words, the right reasoning, to get Dean to admit it? If this is what they have, this little space, could they not fill it?

He mills words, tattered, desperate, pleading words until just before dawn. The Eastern horizon greys, the sun already threatens to rise and eat up the dog star and all its blazing companions, but the heat breaks for a while and he sleeps.

Dean resumes driving when it’s light. On to the next town, and then on and on through the dried out land. The air glimmers. Dust speckles the windshield and gets in Sam’s eyes whenever he blinks.

At some point, Dean wakes him with a nudge and a grin. He holds out aspirin and a bottle of water ready for him to take. “Soft rock still works, huh?” he laughs. “Hey, you got the money?”

Sam takes out his wallet, but it’s not as much as he remembers. Some of it must have gone missing in the fight. It’s enough for a tank full, some greasy take-out, and the glossy magazine Dean drops in Sam’s lap like a present. “Centerfold, man, check it out. I know what I’ll be having sweet dreams about tonight.”

Sam drops it in the back and ignores him. Absently, he flexes his fingers.

His neck is killing him. What he needs after this night is a shower and an actual bed, and it doesn’t matter that the place Dean picks ranks low even by their standards. He drops the duffle bag on the stained rug and starts digging for a fresh shirt.

Dean taps him on the shoulder. “Not so fast, cowboy,” he says and redirects him towards the only chair in the corner. It groans and sways when Sam falls down too hard.

“Dude, no way,” Sam starts, because first shower is his and he’s not stepping down. But Dean crouches before him, shaking a small tube between his fingers, and then takes Sam’s wrists in his hand.

He’s got ointment, Sam realizes. For the cuts and abrasions on his knuckles.

And however rough Dean can be with him, his touch this time is gentle and so painfully familiar. Dad came swooping in every once in a while like Christmas, but Dean was there from the very start, patched him up after his first fight, long before the hunts started, fixed him breakfast and lunch, kept the night at bay when the cold crawled down Sam’s spine in the stormy nights. He looked just like that then, with the dusting of freckles across his nose and the way he furrows his brow in concentration. Felt just like that, the way his fingertips tap across Sam’s skin.

Something twists in Sam’s stomach. He could reach out so easily and bury his hands in Dean’s hair. He could pull him in just like that, for a kiss, for something he doesn’t dare think. He imagines Dean’s mouth falling open, imagines those small sounds he never should have heard, back when he faked sleep and Dean bought it. He was almost too young to understand what they meant.

He has to turn away then. Shakes Dean off and turns his back, flexes his fingers in hope the pain will ground him. “Thanks,” he mumbles and stumbles towards the bathroom, makes sure to turn the lock.

A weak stream of lukewarm water patters down on his shoulders, but he can still hear Dean outside. “You okay, Sammy?” he asks, and Sam doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare breathe for a moment.

He wishes he could run again. If he had it in him, he’d get a thousand miles between himself and this mess, find a way to purge his soul of every desire. Fake normal until it becomes true.

But he knows, because he tried, that he’ll only snap back into place. The bench of the car and the parallels of two beds like a yoke he’s tied to, with Dean by his side.

This little distance, this is where he belongs.


End file.
